Into the Flame

by Christina Dodd

He had to get away, get a hold of himself, before he blurted out what he’d done. Gathering up his half-eaten meal, he said, ‘‘You’re hungry. I’ll fix soup.’’

  Firebird watched him stride out of the room, and her stomach sank.

  She would have been happier if he’d yelled at her. Instead he had looked exactly as he had fifteen minutes ago—emotionless and still, like a pond waiting for a stone to be dropped into its depths.

  When she’d met him at Brown, he hadn’t been like that at all. He’d been intense, filled with emotions that bubbled just below the surface, hidden fire that dared her to touch the heart of the flame. In those days, the idea of playing with fire held its own attractions, and she’d taken the dare.

  What a child she had been.

  With a sigh, she slipped out of bed and made her shaky way to the bathroom. It had been remodeled in cool shades of blue and warm shades of gold, and contained a large glass shower, two copper sinks, and a toilet hidden in its own cubbyhole. As she used the toilet, she grinned at the magazine rack in there. Typical guy, to think of that.

  As she washed her hands, she kept her attention on the faucet, which looked like an old-fashioned pump. Very cool, not at all the kind of thing she would have suspected Douglas would pick out—and as long as she stared at the faucet, she didn’t have to look in the bronze-framed mirror over the sink.

  She didn’t yet have the strength to view her reflection and her poor, half-shorn head.

  She heard him in the bedroom, and met him at the bathroom door.

  ‘‘Are you all right?’’ His gaze swept her from head to foot, and while his concern warmed her, there wasn’t a scrap of passion in his eyes.

  Couldn’t he see beyond the flannel nightgown?

  Apparently not.

  ‘‘I’m fine.’’ She went back to the bed. She was moving more easily. Her ankle no longer felt as if it would crack. The pain in her joints was easing.

  ‘‘No bleeding? No injuries that I—’’

  ‘‘I’m fine.’’ She lay down, pulled the covers up, and glared.

  He offered a capped and insulated plastic cup. ‘‘Tomato basil. I hope you like it.’’

  ‘‘I like it a lot.’’ She peeled back the top and took a sip. The heat, texture, and flavors struck the perfect chord, and she sighed with delight. ‘‘Wonderful.’’

  ‘‘Good.’’ He sat in his chair, rested his elbows on his thighs, cupped his hands, and stared at her.

  ‘‘Are you okay?’’ She slurped a little. Embarrassing, but he was right: She really had been hungry.

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Are you angry at me for not telling you about my parents . . . your parents sooner?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  She took a long drink of the chunky soup, chewed, and swallowed, then tentatively asked, ‘‘Then what are you thinking?’’

  ‘‘That I almost got you killed.’’

  ‘‘You said that before, I think.’’ She tried to remember the moment, and got the vague impression of sloshing waves. ‘‘In the ocean.’’

  ‘‘It’s truer than ever.’’

  ‘‘No, it’s not. The Varinskis are after me. They don’t know about you. They can’t.’’

  He stirred. Stood. Walked toward the window and braced his arms against the frame. The morning light bathed him, tangling in his blond hair, etching his tanned skin with pale gold. His chiseled jaw was thrust forward, his brows drawn. . . .

  ‘‘You are angry.’’

  ‘‘Not at you.’’ He turned to face her. ‘‘I was—mad that you’d left me without a word. For almost three years, I’ve been furious that you’d abandoned me, as my parents had. I never suspected you saw me as a cougar. When you came here and told me about Aleksandr, I was livid that you’d had my son and not told me. But now I understand. I understand everything, and you must never feel guilty for not telling me about my . . . about Konstantine and Zorana.’’ He came to the bed, sat, and leaned toward her. ‘‘Three years ago, I hurt you by not confiding in you and asking for your help, but don’t for a minute believethat I told you I loved you and lied. I meant every word.’’

  ‘‘You loved me?’’ Was he telling the truth, or telling her what she wanted to hear?

  ‘‘Before I ever met you, I searched your private records—and found scrambled information. It could have been a computer glitch, or operator error, but I didn’t think so.’’

  One side of her mouth tilted up in satisfaction. ‘‘My brother’s wife, Ann . . . she’s good with computers, and getting better all the time. She’s the one who scrambled the information. It’s tough to find any details about the Wilders.’’

  ‘‘I went through high school knowing what I wanted to do—become a police officer. Because a man who can change into a cougar, who can track any criminal, can get a job anywhere in the US, and cops have an in when it comes to digging around for information.’’ He continued to watch her, scrutinize her. ‘‘And because, as you said, I wanted to find my roots.’’

  ‘‘If you looked at all, you found the Varinskis.’’ She put the empty cup aside. ‘‘They’re on the Internet, both as a legend and as a corporate entity.’’

  ‘‘I did find them. I found them by the time I was thirteen. I e-mailed them. I told them that I was like them.’’ Douglas looked back at his adolescent self with a derisive smile. ‘‘They never replied. Looking back, I realized they must get a hundred e-mails a day from kids who think it would be cool to turn into animals.’’

  ‘‘From kids who read too much Harry Potter.’’ When she thought about the Varinskis receiving e-mails from innocent children, when she thought about them hearing from Douglas, she wanted to shudder with fear. When she realized that Aleksandr would do things equally stupid, equally dangerous, she wanted to wrap herself around him and protect him from the demons who saw humans as prey—and from the humans who saw children as targets.

  ‘‘Even before I graduated from high school, I went into law enforcement. I made my reputation right away.’’ He didn’t change expressions, but something about the way he held himself made her think he was proud of what he did in his work. ‘‘I used that reputation to search for clues about my background. My best theory was that my father was a Varinski, maybe just traveling through, who had found a woman and raped her—I figured that was the most likely explanation, considering that I had been abandoned by my mother.’’

  Firebird nodded. That was logical; Varinskis never mated, never married. Their sons were born from quick, brutal assaults. In fact, the Varinskis’ initial indignation about her father stemmed from the seeming insanity of his love and marriage. Later they had another reason for swearing revenge: When they chased after the newlyweds, to protect his wife, Konstantine had killed his brother.

  Douglas continued, ‘‘Then I found a blog written by one of the young Varinskis. He claimed that since their old leader, Konstantine, had abandoned them to live in America with his wife, the clan had weakened and needed a change of leadership.’’

  Firebird laughed derisively. ‘‘I can’t believe he was dumb enough to put that out on the Internet.’’

  ‘‘Have you seen the stuff people put out there? The first thing an officer does when faced with a crime is go to Facebook and see if someone has bragged or confessed. It saves a lot of trouble.’’

  They shook their heads in unison, two people united by their dedication to maintaining their privacy.

  ‘‘I thought the Konstantine story was worth following up on,’’ Douglas said, ‘‘but in the United States, there were no Varinskis I could find. So I looked for Russian immigrants, specifically Russian immigrants in Nevada and the western United States.’’

  ‘‘There are a bunch in northern Washington.’’

  ‘‘I talked to them. They all knew stories about Varinskis, stories they would tell their kids to scare them into behaving. They’d even heard about the Konstantine who left the family to marry a Gypsy, and how the clan had sworn vengea
nce. But they didn’t know where he was, or even if it was true.’’

  ‘‘Because Konstantine and Zorana had been careful to stay away.’’ She sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘‘Too many Russians would recognize a Varinski when they saw one.’’

  ‘‘Yes. You’re filling in the gaps.’’ Gratification eased the tautness of his face. ‘‘Keeping the tale of Konstantine in mind, I explored the immigration records and found a Russian immigrant couple who had arrived at about the right time, and who had a very unusual last name—Wilder.’’

  ‘‘That is not an unusual last name,’’ she said tartly.

  ‘‘It is for a Russian immigrant. So I looked for the Wilders’ current location, and couldn’t find it. But I did find Wilder Winery in Napa Valley, and Jasha Wilder, born in the US with a very Russian first name, who had bragged to his employees about his sister, who got a full-ride scholarship to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.’’

  Douglas made her uneasy; he was too clever.

  ‘‘So I found you, and you thought you were so wise, so canny about not giving out information about your family.’’

  ‘‘I was!’’

  ‘‘You were a baby.’’ Amusement flickered across his cool face. ‘‘I could have cajoled information out of you, but seducing you was my mistake. I spent so much time talking to you, finding out that you spoke some Russian, that you knew your way around glass art because your best friend was an artist, that you painted for fun but took software programming and Japanese so you could work for the winery, that you liked yellow roses and red carnations. . . .’’

  Her gaze fell again on the yellow rose floating in the cereal bowl beside the bed.

  ‘‘I found out a thousand details about you, and missed the one I’d sought you out to discover—who your father was, and where your family lived—all because I was fascinated by this so-charming face.’’ His fingertips hovered just above her cheek. ‘‘When you smiled at me, your whole face lit up, and I fell . . . so hard.’’

  Maybe she did believe he had loved her. After all, why would he lie? ‘‘When I left, you took it badly?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Good.’’ She felt as if a weight had been lifted off her chest, and she took her first free breath since she’d seen him change from a cougar into a man. ‘‘Because I was devastated.’’

  ‘‘Yes, but you didn’t . . .’’

  ‘‘Didn’t what?’’

  His fingertips finally touched her face, and with that single touch, he held her in place for his kiss. He opened her lips with his, slid his tongue in her mouth, swirled, and feinted.

  Her eyes slid closed. She gave herself up to the sensation, glad now that she’d told him about his newfound family. Glad that he’d explained, and so eloquently, why he had sought her out at Brown, and why he had seduced her.

  He had loved her. Did he love her now?

  No, he hadn’t said that, but perhaps he could once again learn.

  And if he didn’t . . . well. She’d been alone for a long time. For now, she would enjoy this.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Lifting her arms, Firebird wrapped them around Doug’s shoulders and pulled him close, and when his chest rested against hers and his heart beat with the same rhythm, he relaxed for the first time in his life.

  ‘‘Are you hungry?’’ He strove to sound casual.

  She shook her head.

  ‘‘Thirsty? Tired? Do you need to use the facilities?’’

  She continued to shake her head.

  ‘‘Then I would very much like to make love to you.’’ He held his breath, waiting for the most important confirmation of his life.

  She smiled that grand and glorious smile, the one that spread to her eyes into the depths of her soul . . . the one that had first seduced him. ‘‘I’d very much like that, myself.’’

  Blood left his brain and rushed straight for his dick, and he suspected—he feared—he had enough to run only one of them at a time.

  Reaching over, he touched the switches on the bedside table.

  The fireplace sprang to life. Low, sexy, jazzy music began to play.

  ‘‘Is that supposed to impress me?’’ she asked.

  ‘‘Did it?’’

  Taking his outstretched hand, she brought it back to her face and kissed the fingers while saying, ‘‘Clever planning. Hand steady as a rock. Smooth move. Suave. All in all, a good job.’’

  Did she know that with each kiss, he grew less suave and more savage?

  He stroked her face, spread her hair across her pillow, touched the shorn side, murmured, ‘‘I’m sorry.’’

  She smiled at him. ‘‘We’ll fix it.’’

  Every night since she’d fled, he’d dreamed of holding her beneath him, and every night he had subjected her to wild debaucheries of the kind he would never have tried with the sweet, shy virgin Firebird had been. Every time he had imagined finding her, she was alone and just happened to be clothed in a lace teddy with a garter belt, or a leather bustier, or, best of all, a simple housedress with nothing underneath. But no matter what he did to her—and in his dreams he had been violently, gloriously sexual—she always cried out and climaxed and held him afterward and wept, and begged his forgiveness and gone down on him. . . .

  ‘‘Shit.’’ Desire slammed him like a million volts of electricity.

  She lifted her head off the pillow. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’

  ‘‘Nothing,’’ he croaked.

  He couldn’t do any of the things he’d dreamed and imagined, because it was his fault she’d run away. Yet those scenarios crowded his mind, challenging his control, making him want to take her swiftly, take her again, taste her between the legs, and take her again. No matter that she was innocent of wrongdoing; the demon of desire whispered in his mind to keep her prisoner and sate himself.

  Even dressed in Mrs. Burchett’s flannel nightgown, she tried his control.

  ‘‘Are you shy?’’ She pushed him over onto his back and sprawled across his chest, a warm, squirming armful of fantasy. ‘‘Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten the basics? Here, let me start things off.’’ She unfastened the first four buttons of her nightgown.

  He didn’t move, transfixed by the hollow of her throat, by the smooth skin of her chest.

  She laughed at him and accused, ‘‘You want me to do all the work!’’

  ‘‘No. That’s not it.’’ He was afraid that if he caught a glimpse of her breast, he would unzip and— Shit. He shouldn’t have even thought about her breast. Now his dick tried to claw its way out of his jeans.

  ‘‘Here. Let me show you the basics. First you take off your shirt.’’ She urged him to sit up, and stripped it away.

  His tattoo glowed like a fifties Technicolor movie. The reds were true, the blues were cold, the yellows were hot, and all arranged from his shoulder to his belt like the claw marks of a cougar.

  He didn’t care about that.

  What made him cringe was the small black burn at the base of his throat. The burn that was shaped like a cross.

  She saw it all. She didn’t seem to care, or even particularly notice. ‘‘Then I take off my nightgown.’’ She got up on her knees and stripped it away.

  She had on panties. Thank God.

  But the very breasts he had feared were there, small and perfect, with nipples that pointed at his mouth and begged to be suckled. He shut his eyes and blindly reached for her, tugging her forward, and without ever looking, he wrapped his mouth around her breast.

  She tasted like whipped cream and cinnamon and sex, and he was starving to death. That nipple poked at his tongue, and as he sucked, it grew more rigid. Inspired, he cupped her other breast, caught that nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and tugged softly.

  She shuddered. She wrapped her fingers in his hair and held him in place, and shuddered again.

  He lifted his knee between her legs and rubbed, once, twice, and when she sought that p
ressure, he gave up her breast and flipped her onto her back. He knelt over her, and once again he slid his knee between her legs. But this time he applied a steady pressure and kissed her mouth. Her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, her ears . . . She was trying to meet his kiss, moving her head to follow him, but he didn’t let her catch up.

  Because right now, his discipline was holding.

  Yet if he kissed her as he wished to, if he thrust his tongue into her mouth, he’d remember his dream of kissing and fucking her at the same time, the fantasy of his hard-driving, thrusting motion that would imprint him on her—

  He had to think of something else.

  He nuzzled her neck, skimming the soft skin at her throat, then moving across her collarbone, first one side, then the other.

  And all the time, the beast in him urged, Take her. Take her now. Take her hard. Make her yours.

  ‘‘You’re trembling.’’ She stroked his forehead. ‘‘I forgot—you were in the water, too. You had hypothermia. Are you able to—’’

  He brought his head up so fast, his neck cracked. ‘‘I can’t stop.’’

  She couldn’t ask that of him.

  ‘‘But will you be hurt if you . . .’’

  Lowering his head almost to her breastbone right over her heart, he breathed on her like a man clearing a frozen window. He put all the heat of his soul in that breath, pushing oxygen, lust, and desperation through her skin, her tissues, and into her beating heart.

  She stilled. Her eyes half closed. She seemed to be listening, absorbing his essence and his desires.

  Then, without realizing what she was doing, she fulfilled one of his wicked dreams.

  Stretching her arms above her head, she grasped the corners of her pillow. ‘‘If I remain very still and let you do whatever you want, do you promise to care for yourself?’’

  He heard the words, but he couldn’t understand through the roaring in his ears. His gaze swept her body, laid out like a bacchanalian feast. He smelled the scent of arousal that rose like an aphrodisiac from her skin. He heard the rush of air through her lungs, the hurried sound that made him realize that she anticipated pleasure.